


The Beast Maiden Of The Wild Wood

by Madam_O



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017), Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types
Genre: AU, All hope is lost, Belle doesn't get to the castle in time, F/M, Gaston is alive, Gen, The Beast becomes a real beast, The enchanted servants become rubbish, The mirror is broken before the final act, but then...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 16:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10666728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madam_O/pseuds/Madam_O
Summary: “Hush and listen,” Grandmama says with a smile, eyes forever on her knitting. “You must attend the tale carefully, or disregard it at your own peril. It was then that the change came, that the woods turned. That the wolves that once plagued night travelers vanished and were replaced by strange sounds and even stranger sights. Howling and roaring in the wee hours, the likes of nothing that had been heard before. Unearthly apparitions in the mist; a huge, hairy creature stalking the forest at night, often in the company of his mistress...the Beast Maiden.”





	The Beast Maiden Of The Wild Wood

The children gather around the fireplace at night in the village of Villeneuve, just as children do in any village, and beg for a story to keep bedtime at bay. 

“What kind of story would you want, then?” their grandmama might say on any given night.

“A scary story!” is always the immediate reply from the older and braver children as they look at their younger siblings with a nasty grin.

“Noooo,” the little ones start to whine as they hide their faces in their shirts. Some of the middle children sit up taller and stare back at their big siblings, refusing to look afraid.

Grandmama replies, “Oh ho, I think not! And have you all up half the night calling for poor, tired Grandmama to come chase your nightmares away? Why it was only a few years ago that Renaud was so frightened, I had to let him share my bed after he soiled his own.” She chuckles, eyeing a particularly tall and unpleasant looking boy, who scowls. The younger children laugh and relax a little.

“Tell the one about the Beast Maiden,” a small girl pipes up. 

“Not that old thing again,” Renaud groans and rolls his eyes. Some of the others grumble in agreement.

The little girl holds her head high and ignores them. “It's not too very scary,” she says loudly over their complaints. “And besides, it's romantic.”

The girls in the room nod and smile, unless they’re the sort who prefer stories with sword fights and murders. The boys either complain even louder or sit quietly and pretend not to be interested.

Arguments ensue. Eventually Renaud shuts the others up by shouting, “All right, all right. You can have your stupid maiden, but only if Grandmama tells it as scary as she can. Agreed?”

The others nod and mutter their assent a little nervously. Grandmama is extremely skilled at making stories scary.

“All right then”, the old woman says as she settles her bones into the chair closest to the fire, the one nobody is allowed to sit in unless they’re Grandmama and it’s dark outside with the crickets fiddling away and the frogs groaning out their lonesome love songs. Story time, in other words.

The children squint, watching the orange firelight dance over the mild expression on the beloved old woman’s face. She says nothing for a while and doesn’t look at them, keeping her eyes on the knitting held in her knobby fingers. The only sounds are the crackling of the fire, the rhythmic squeak of the rocking chair, and the clicking of knitting needles as the house holds its breath in silent suspense for her to begin.

Finally a gleaming eye peeks up at the children, Grandmama takes a deep breath, and her tale commences.

********

Once their was a maid. A maid of Villeneuve, in fact, this very village. She lived in a cottage on the edge of town. It was a pretty cottage, well kept, but small, with chickens and a charming garden in front. You may know it, for Monsieur Flaubert lives there now, although I must say, he doesn’t keep it up half so well. But when I was a girl I passed it often and sometimes I was allowed to look at the newborn chicks and pet them, if there were any and I didn't have too much work to do.

Back then girls were put to the mending and the laundry early, sometimes as young as seven, while Mama sweated in the kitchen and Papa worked his trade with his sons. A few of the boys attended the schoolhouse, but only if their families had the money to spare them. It wasn’t like today, with everyone learning their numbers and letters and reading books to entertain themselves, as if they were all rich and idle with nothing else to fill the time.

But as I was saying, all the girls did the laundry then, gathered around the fountain in the village square. We scrubbed for hours till our fingers were shriveled and sore and our backs ached. We could giggle and chat a little if no one was watching us, but they usually were. I’d like to see a few of you try it and learn the true meaning of hard work!

Every morning this maid, a young woman named Belle, would walk through the square and purchase bread and cheese for the morning repast. She was quite a sight, for she kept her skirt tucked in at the waist of her bloomers and she wore the oddest dresses that she'd sewn herself. Her hair was usually a mess. 

There was no mother, obviously, only her elderly father who was some sort of artist who earned his bread by making music boxes, of all things, which he sold at market. They were a strange pair with strange ideas and not particularly liked or trusted by their neighbors. 

When she passed through we would pause our work to watch and laugh. She never looked to where she was going because she was forever reading (and the only one who did read back then). She was blind and deaf to anything but the imaginary castles in her books, yet somehow every morning she was able to maneuver through the crowd without so much as a stubbed toe or bruised shoulder. 

There was something almost magical about her, really, and we made up stories about her mysterious origins. Some girls said she was a changeling or a fairy princess. I thought her mother had been a noble lady who’d dallied with the artist, and then been forced to abandon them both by her cruel family so she could be married to someone more suitable to her birth.

Sometimes she tried to interrupt our chores to speak to us of puzzling, lofty matters. She gave impromptu lectures on the structure of dragonfly wings, or how rainbows were made, or the properties of different minerals. She was very concerned with the education of women and she encouraged us to learn to read and be curious about the world.

Well, most of us weren’t interested if it meant turning out like her. It was well known that she was going to be a spinster. Despite her odd appearance she was quite pretty, yet she spurned any offers given to her. Even the town hero, Captain Gaston, was bewitched by her natural beauty. But was he good enough for Mademoiselle Belle? Think again.

Honestly, I think the whole village had had quite enough of her, what with her superior attitude and her meddling, by the time she and her father both disappeared.

One day the old man left for market with his horse and cart. Usually he would have returned a few days later, but they say he showed up at the tavern the next night raving about an enchanted castle in the middle of the woods occupied by a great beast, half man and half animal, who had kidnapped his daughter.

Everyone thought he was mad, of course. But the Captain humored him in hope of winning his favor. They went in search of the beast’s castle and no one was surprised when they didn’t find it, all except the old man. He disappeared into the woods looking for Belle and the Captain was obliged to go search for him, but never found anything. He was believed lost to the wolves.

Oddly enough, Belle really was missing. People thought she’d finally had enough of her permanently befuddled father and had gone and eloped with some stranger from out of town. No one saw her again for some time. 

The old man finally returned alive, surprisingly, and claimed that the Captain had tried to kill him. He was committed to the asylum immediately, of course, or would have been if Belle herself hadn’t suddenly appeared and claimed his story to be entirely true!

She had on the most lovely gown (which she clearly had not made herself) and carried a beautifully ornamented mirror. She said that the beast was real and that Captain Gaston was a monster. She held aloft the mirror and said we could all see the beast for ourselves in it. 

Sadly we never found out if any of it was true, for the Captain was so beside himself with rage that he ripped the mirror from her hands and smashed it to the ground. He was quite deranged, to tell the truth. He grabbed her roughly and demanded that she marry him and when she slapped him in reply, he hit her and threw her to the ground. 

Things got out of hand after that. The local clergyman, Pere Robert, came to her rescue with some others, and the Captain was dragged away by his friends. Belle was taken half-conscious to the church with her father. By the time the whole mess was sorted out it was the next day. 

The asylum was conveniently forgotten, as was the story of the beast. Everyone decided that we'd all been through quite enough. The villagers liked Belle and her father even less than before, but agreed that they had a right to be left in peace. Pere Robert gave a sermon about being good to your neighbors that made everyone feel terribly ashamed of themselves. 

Belle’s father never truly recovered from his ordeal. He couldn't bear to have Belle gone from his side for very long and his health never fully improved from his time lost in the woods. She couldn't leave him for more than an hour or two.

Still, they say she went back into the woods a short time after that, to find her magical beast, I suppose. She went in the night while her father slept and when she came back she was...changed. Stricken and sad. 

Both she and her father seemed to fade into shadows of themselves. One day his illness caught up to him and he died, and she buried him. Then she disappeared herself, one final time. A note was left for Pere Robert requesting that he take possession of the chickens. She took nothing with her but her horse, as far as anyone could tell.

And that was the last anyone saw of the girl they knew as Belle.

********

“Yes, yes, and what happened next?” the little girl says, squirming impatiently. She always likes the second part better than the first. 

“Hush and listen,” Grandmama says with a smile, eyes forever on her knitting. “You must attend the tale carefully, or disregard it at your own peril. It was then that the change came, that the woods turned. That the wolves that once plagued night travelers vanished and were replaced by strange sounds and even stranger sights. Howling and roaring in the wee hours, the likes of nothing that had been heard before. Unearthly apparitions in the mist; a huge, hairy creature stalking the forest at night, often in the company of his mistress...the Beast Maiden.” 

She looks up from her knitting then, piercing her audience with her gaze, and the children shudder. The small girl smiles and shivers pleasantly in anticipation.

**Author's Note:**

> Augh. I really loved this idea when it came to me, and I enjoyed writing the prologue bit, but the first part of the "story" was so exposition heavy and telling-not-showing that I really felt less confident about the whole thing at the end of this chapter. Feedback is always appreciated, as are kudos, obviously.


End file.
